Wildfires Continue

After all of the wildfire activity on Monday it was pretty scary to have even more on Tuesday that was much closer to where we live. I was driving home from grocery shopping when I noticed a large cloud of smoke rising from the general area of our residence in Seagrove Beach. I called home to find out where it was and told that it was located down the road a ways and not in our immediate vicinity. It was about 2.5 miles west of our home.

Smoke from the Seagrove Beach fire.

Luckily for our community a lot of firefighting equipment and personnel were nearby mopping up the Panama City Beach fire, from the day before, and were able to respond quickly. Three houses were destroyed and two others were heavily damaged. The fire was put down in about two hours and thank God for that because there are a lot of homes and people in the area where it broke out.

Also in the area was one of the P-3 Orion air tanker planes that I had come to know and recognize (#22) from living in Cedar Valley where it had been active in fighting Nevada & Utah wildfires last year out of the Cedar City Airport. As my former neighbor Larry quipped to me yesterday on the phone, "you probably weren't expecting to see that albatross flying overhead down in Florida". No Larry, I really wasn't.

Coming in for an air drop.


A familiar sight overhead.

Meanwhile the fire in Panama City Beach, which was being monitored and mopped up, flared again because resources had been diverted to the Seagrove Beach blaze. It was an eerie and unsettling sight to see the fire trucks and rescue squad vehicles suddenly turn around and begin racing back to the scene of the fire that they had left unattended for a few hours, only to see it rise menacingly again on the horizon. Let's all pray for rain.

The Panama City Beach fire flares up again on Tuesday afternoon.

Still smoldering woods from the Panama City Beach fire.


Burned fence and melted siding


A very close call.